"Trumpelstiltskin, meanwhile, has revealed a side of his character that voters hitherto have ignored, or even admired in a perverse way. He inherited wealth and ran a private company the way he wanted to, saying what he wanted and hiring and firing whom he pleased, without answering to partners, shareholders or the general public.

"He is not a particularly good businessman; had he invested his inheritance in a stock-market index fund, his net worth would be double what it is today. But the psychic rewards of unrestricted narcissism more than compensated for the unperformance of his portfolio."

"Neil had an optimistic way of using the word 'beautiful'. But when I looked out, it wasn’t beautiful. It was desolate - totally lifeless. Really, not much except shades of grey and a black horizon. It was magnificent but it’s not very habitable - very lifeless."

.....................................story here. Moral here:1 – Never be arrogant.2 – Don’t waste ammunition.3 – Whiskey makes you think you’re smarter than you are.4 – Always make sure you know who has the power.5 – Don’t mess with old people; they didn’t get old by being stupid.

Politics endures, but human action evolves. We learn. And what are we learning? How to take care of one another, which is the point of what we sometimes call capitalism. (Don't tell Ayn Rand.) It is remarkable that we speak and think about commerce as though competitiveness were its most important feature. There is, as noted, a certain Darwinian aspect to economic competition - and of course we humans do in fact compete over scarce resources. But what is remarkable about human action is not its competitiveness but its almost limitless cooperativeness. Competition is only one of the ways that we learn how best to cooperate with one another - competition is a means to the higher end of social cooperation.-Kevin D. Williamson, The End Is Near And It's Going To Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure

..................if you have ever "flipped" a Monopoly board because of the "obnoxious" behavior of one of your game mates. Hmm. Okay, raise your hand if any of your game mates has ever "flipped" the Monopoly board on you. Interesting post here (Crazy Math Fact #8 out of 9) about whether all spaces on a Monopoly board should be considered "equal". Note the fine print at the bottom of this slide:

The first, most glaring problem is that people complaining about Washington are quite often demanding the impossible.

They want Washington to grow the economy or the job market a lot, which no one in Washington actually knows how to do.

They want Washington to collect less in taxes, without cutting any significant programs or borrowing money. (Or they want more programs, with taxes to stay the same on everyone except “the rich,” conveniently defined as anyone who makes 20 percent more than the person issuing the demands.)

They want Washington make all the other countries in the world behave themselves, without getting any Americans killed in the process.

They want Washington to ignore most of the rest of the country and just concentrate on their problems, and the problems of people they like.

Washingtonians, unlike the people making the demands, actually have to analyze the feasibility of these various sorts of requests. When they do, they quickly see that they are impossible, and set about finding innovative ways to ignore them.

What follows is neither a political manifesto nor a plan for building a utopian society. To the contrary, I will argue, among other things that the desire to design a perfect society in theory is one of the main obstacles to achieving a better society in fact, and that the very desire to design human communities is itself destructive. The fundamental political problem is politics itself: not liberal politics, not conservative politics, not politics corrupted by big money or distorted by special-interest groups, but politics per se - the practice of delivering critical goods and services through the medium of federal, state, and local governments and their obsolete decision-making practices.-Kevin D. Williamson,The End Is Near And It's Going To Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure

Third, I opposed communism's political totalitarianism. In communism the individual ends up in subjection to the state. True, the Marxist would argue that the state is an "interim" reality which is to be eliminated when the classless society emerges; but the state is the end while it lasts, and man only a means to that end. And if any man's so-called rights or liberties stand in the way of that end, they are simply swept aside. His liberties of expression, his freedom to vote, his freedom to listen to what news he likes or to choose his books are all restricted. Man becomes hardly more, in communism, that a depersonalized cog in the turning wheel of the state.-Martin Luther King, Jr., as excerpted from here

With apologies to the sainted Thomas Jefferson, there are few if any truths that we may hold to be self-evident. The words of the Declaration of Independence are both beautiful and inspiring, but to believe that we may find within them the answers to our present difficulties is to be a hostage to sentimentality. The Declaration of Independence is a statement of our aspirations, not a description of our reality. Good poetry makes bad politics.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.-Full text of the Declaration of Independence is here

It was at Harvard University in 1927 that I first decided to go into politics. No, I wasn't a Harvard man. But I was born and raised in North Cambridge, Massachusetts, a stable, mostly Irish, working-class neighborhood a mile or two from the university. At the age of fourteen, I landed a summer job as a groundskeeper, cutting the grass and trimming the hedges at Harvard. It was tough work, and I was paid seventeen cents an hour. On a beautiful June day, as I was going about my daily grind, the class of 1927 gathered in a huge canvas tent to celebrate commencement. Inside, I could see hundreds of young men standing around in their white linen suits, laughing and talking. The were also drinking champagne, which was illegal in 1927 because of Prohibition. I remember the scene like it was yesterday, and I can still feel the anger I felt then, almost sixty years ago, as I write these words. It was the illegal champagne that really annoyed me. Who the hell do these people think they are, I said to myself, that the law means nothing to them?-Tip O'Neill, with William Novak, The Man Of The House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O'Neill

"I definitely think the system is designed in a way that benefits rich people (that’s a significant theme of the book I’m working on), but that has not much to do with the preferred policies of a bunch of mustache-twirling fat cats. Indeed, the whole notion that rich people are ideologically homogenous is little more than the grimy, greasy, stain left behind from Marxism’s departure down the toilet bowl of history. There are rich people -- and some big corporations -- that are for limited government and there are rich people -- and far too many big corporations -- that want to expand the role of government.

"My very short, partial, explanation for why the system seems rigged for the benefit of rich people has to do with the fact that complexity is a subsidy. The more rules and regulations the government creates, the more it creates a society where people with resources -- good educations, good lawyers, good lobbyists, and good connections -- can rise while those without such resources are left to climb hurdles on their own."

...Shakespeare accelerated his pace as his career proceeded. In plays written during his most productive and inventive period - Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear - neologisms occur at the fairly astonishing rate of one every two and a half lines. Hamlet alone gave audiences about six hundred words, that according to all other evidence, they had never heard before. Among the words first found in Shakespeare are abstemious, antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, excellent, barefaced, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, indistinguishable, well-read, zany, and countless others (including countless). Where would we be without them? He was particularly prolific, as David Crystal points out, when it came to attaching un- prefixes to words to make new words that no one had thought of before - unmask, unhand, unlock, untie, unveil, and no fewer that 309 others in a similar vein. Consider how helplessly prolix the alternatives to any of these terms are and you appreciate how much punch Shakespeare gave English.-Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage

what freedom's not some under's mere abovehot breathing yes which fear will never no?measureless our pure living complete lovewhose doom is beauty and its fate to growshall hate confound the wise?doubt blind the brave?does mask wear face?have singings gone to say?here youngest selves yet younger selves conceiveare worlds collapsing?any was a glovebut i'm and you are actual either handis when for sale?forever is to giveand on forever's very now we standnor the first rose explodes but shall increasewhole truthful infinite immediate us

While rooting through a whole passel of old books last weekend, a "coffee table book", The Best of Life, surfaced. The Intertunnel has put a dent in the popularity of such publications, but they are fun to thumb through. Here are few samples: